Ed Park is joining Amazon’s New York-based trade division on October 3 as a senior editor, where he will acquire and edit literary fiction. Park is a founding editor of The Believer, a former editor at the Village Voice and the Poetry Foundation, and author of the novel PERSONAL DAYS (2008). At media relations firm Cave Henricks Communications, Jessica Krakoski has been promoted to associate director of publicity. In addition, Claudia Dizenzo Mueller joins the company as publicity manager (she was at Basic Books) and Kimberly Griggs has been hired as social media coordinator. VP and publicity director Dennis Welch […]
eNews
Kindle Library Lending Begins
Kindle’s library lending initiative has gone live in the US libraries served by OverDrive. The program was first announced in April, and spotted in a beta rollout that began Monday at the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System. (Though a You Tube video from King County describing the download process was taken down at Amazon’s request, according to an LJ story.) Director of the King County Library System Bill Ptacek implied that the Kindle tablet expected later this year may more prominently promote library ebook lending, though his remark is a bit cryptic: “Ptacek is expecting Kindle […]
eNews: Will Facebook “Like” Reading?; Color Purple to Open Road; and More
Facebook is expected to make significant announcements at Thursday’s f8 developer conference about integrating media into the site, including “a huge package of wide-ranging news, video and music partnerships, and a structure for sharing content activity inside and outside of Facebook.” AllThingsD reports that the motto for the event is, “Read. Watch. Listen.” The “read” theme may apply more to news (Yahoo is said to be among the “publisher” partners)–though Tech Crunch says the “like” button will get more nuanced, with the addition of “Read,” “Listened” and “Watch” buttons (plus one called “Want”). ATD TC Open Road has licensed ebook […]
Library Admits Flaws, Postpones Orphan Release–Yet Vows to Continue
The University of Michigan has taken the logical and appropriate step following the Authors Guild’s swift ability to show that the “due diligence” process for finding potential owners of supposed orphan works before treating those books as available for free distribution was fatally flawed. They said in a statement today, “The close and welcome scrutiny of the list of potential orphan works has revealed a number of errors, some of them serious. This tells us that our pilot process is flawed. “Having learned from our mistakes—we are, after all, an educational institution—we have already begun an examination of our procedures […]
Chin Approves Schedule for Discovery and Motions Moving to Google Books Trial
At today’s court hearing to update Judge Denny Chin, the parties to the Google Books case brought no dramatic reports of progress on a settlement (as widely expected), despite the judge’s warning the last time around to work out a deal or prepare to litigate. So Judge Chin followed through on his promise and scheduled a pathway to trial, albeit a slow one. Attorney Michael Boni, speaking for the Authors Guild only this time, said the authors organization remains in “active discussions” with Google about a settlement as part of a “parallel track” of preparing for litigation. Representatives of the […]
eNews: Amazon Spain, Local Kindle Ads, Estimates of 5.4 Million eReaders in Q2, and More
As expected, Amazon.es launched yesterday with a press conference in Madrid featuring vp for Europe Greg Greely (in English). Greely announced the company offers 2.5 million print books in Spanish and 80,000 in Catalan, which because of the fixed price laws they can sell at a maximum discount of 5 percent. Orders from Spain will be served from a warehouse in a secret location outside Spain–just as Amazon.es’s 100 employees (many of whom joined Amazon as part of the BuyVIP acquisition last year) are not in Spain either, working out of the company’s European headquarters in Luxembourg. Regarding the reported […]